Archbishop Denis Hurley

Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, South Africa came under the influence of Cardijn while studying in Rome during the 1930s.

He promoted Cardijn's methods throughout his episcopal career.





Quote:

The handling of group attitudes calls for a whole new dimension to Christian ethics, a mutation from being concerned predominantly with the personal implications of behaviour to being concerned with the social impflcations . . . We are only beginning . . . It was only towards the end of the 19th century that the social gospel began to emerge. Karl Marx had beaten us to it by 50 years at least." There have been, he added, the great social encyclicals, which have had what impact they have thanks to "an educational genius of the 20th century, Joseph Cardijn," though "unfortunately his influence has not yet seeped through the vast body of the Church."

- Archbishop Denis Hurley, Durban


Quote:

"Bishop Josef Cardijn's Young Christian Worker movement was also influential. One of the first things I ever did as bishop was to send a priest to England to learn about it and pass it on to he diocese. Cardijn spoke at the Council, most eloquently. He took the theology of the Church as the Body of Christ. To my mind the growth and recovery of the theology of the mystical Body of Christ made the greatest contribution to Vatican II. It had begun around 1910, 1912 when people woke up to what St Paul had been writing about. They realised that what they had been reading for years their eyes were now opened to, that the Church is the Body of Christ. The implications of that grew and grew. The liturgical movement took it up, and the lay movements. Before that the Church had been an organisation, now it was something alive."

- Archbishop Denis Hurley, Durban


Influence of Cardjn while studying in Rome


Comments